Non-lawyer justices play key role in rural areas

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The New York State Bar Association’s (NYSBA) announcement last month — that a new task force will look into the shortage of lawyers in rural areas — prompted a reminder from the New York State Magistrate’s Association about the importance of non-lawyer justices in small town and village courts.

The task force will investigate the impact of rural attorney shortages on access to justice, challenges in delivering legal services in rural areas, and the special practice needs of rural attorneys. NYSBA officials said the task force will not address the issue of non-lawyer town and village justices.

Ninety-seven percent of New York lawyers work and live in urban and suburban areas, according to the state bar association. Likewise, only about 700 of the state’s 1,830 town and village justices are lawyers, according to state Commission on Judicial Conduct.

There have been calls in the past for a change in the state Constitution to require that town and village justices be lawyers, partly due to the number of complaints made against them. But, because of the shortage of lawyers in rural communities, it would be difficult to find lawyers to take their place.

“The Commission has found overall that town and village justices are capable in the discharge of their duties and conscientious in their adherence to the judicial code of ethics,” the Commission wrote in its 2019 annual report.

“Yet the Commission has also encountered more disciplinary issues with town and village justices than with judges of the higher courts,” according to the annual report.

“Town and village justices account for 70 percent of the Commission’s disciplines … Over the last decade, while only 20 percent of the complaints received by the Commission were against town and village justices, 59 percent of the Commission’s investigations and 72 percent of its public decisions (120 out of 167) involved town and village justices, indicating that ethics complaints against them are more likely to have merit. Of those 120 public decisions rendered against town and village justices, 90 were against lay justices,” according to the report.

Tanja Sirago, executive director of the New York State Magistrates Association, said all non-lawyer justices must attend training classes every year and pass an examination to be certified.

“We have access to law clerks, just as every other state-paid judge gets access to law clerks,” Sirago said.

And non-lawyer justices can ask experts for help any time.

“Even if a judge has a question on an arraignment at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and isn’t quite sure what to do, they’re available to reach out to get that information,” said Sirago, town justice in Cairo, Greene County.

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